NextContinent, an international network of member consulting firms, including Asian strategy consultancy Solidiance, has expanded its footprint with a presence in the UK. Solidiance itself meanwhile continues its ventures abroad with the promise of more locations to come.

With the admission of Curzon & Company, a UK-based management and transformation firm, the NextContinent network now spans 29 countries, covering every continent and major hub with the support of 4,500 professionals delivering services in the industries of insurance, automotive, financial services, healthcare, energy and transport among many other sectors.

In the NextContinent network, Curzon joins the likes of Eurogroup Consulting, with locations dotted throughout Europe, North Africa and the US; DACH-based advisory P3 Group with its own US and Canadian branches in addition to Europe; Nexe the Way of Change, which serves the network’s Spanish-speaking territories in Europe and South America, and Asia-based strategy outfit Solidiance – which covers greater Asia, the Middle East, and has itself expanded in recent times to Australia, the US and Europe with offices in Sydney, San Diego and Germany.

With a proud focus on its ‘home-turf advantage’ across Pan-Asia, and its growth driven by an emphasis on on-the-ground local market knowledge, Solidiance’s expansion beyond the continent seeks to feed back into the firm’s Asian expertise, serving as a platform to aid organisations with their own business expansion plans into and out of Asia in areas such as market entry strategies, M&A due diligence, competitive benchmarking, growth strategies, marketing and digital transformations.Launching with offices in Singapore and China in 2006, the consulting firm has since added locations at least every other year, with a strong focus on emergent Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam, and more recently with an expansion to the UEA, Lebanon, Germany, the United States and Australia over the past three years – with the firm’s website teasing more to come in 2018.

Damien Duhamel, Solidiance CEO and Managing Partner Asia Pacific, has previously said of the firm’s strategy for growth; “Solidiance has been growing very rapidly since its inception. We however remain careful to drive growth as opposed to have growth driving our business. We rather grow slower but build stronger foundations and enjoy sustainable profits. Many young consulting firms are built around a nucleus of two-three people. We build systems to avoid over-dependence on our management.”

In the interview with the French Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, Duhamel concluded; “Our coverage of emerging Asia is very solid already and we intend to leverage that further. We have been approached several times by large consultancies with the desire to acquire us but we think there is still plenty of growth ahead for us. So we will remain for a while the only Asia-focused growth strategy consulting firm. That suits us well.”